In 2005 John Ioannidis wrote a paper titled "Why Most Published Research Findings are False". Since then there has been a flood of papers demonstrating that 50% or more of research papers are wrong in most scientific fields.

According to the editor of the world's second most influential medical journal The Lancet this is because of "small sample sizes, tiny eï¬€ects, invalid exploratory analyses, and ï¬‚agrant conï¬‚icts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance…"

Science relies on peer review as a form of quality control, but to anyone who has been involved in this process it has problems.

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This is because peer review can be "biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily ï¬xed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong," again according to the Lancet editor.

In the commercial field this doesn't matter so much. No one is going to spend $2.5B (the average in 2014) developing a new prescription drug based on science that hasn't been put to the test.

Companies do their own due-diligence ensuring studies have been properly set-up, results are significant and can be replicated.

About the Author

Graham Young is chief editor and the publisher of On Line Opinion. He is executive director of the Australian Institute for Progress, an Australian think tank based in Brisbane, and the publisher of On Line Opinion.